Rudeness on the train ride home

[pegkerr]

What dreadful hot weather we have. It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.”

Jane Austen: Letters, September 18, 1796

It was quite hot and humid this afternoon, and I somewhat regretted that I had decided to resume bike riding today. Following my plan, I rode to the LRT station, paid my fare, and then took my bike on the train.

It was really quite crowded, which made me rather tense. I wasn't able to get near the racks for hanging up the bike, so until the second station, I stood awkwardly in the middle of the row, with my bike raised up on the hind wheel, trying to keep it out of everyone's way. Eventually, I got it into the rack and waited until my stop. I eased it out and walked it up on the rear wheel toward the door, taking pains, as I always do to avoid brushing against anyone (and, say, getting bicycle grease on anyone's clothing).

Just as I was rolling out the door, a man standing there said with heavy sarcasm, "Next time, try riding that bike all the way."

I was initially speechless, and then furious. I wanted to fly back onto the train and have it out with the jerk, but the door was already closing. All I could manage, in that split second, was to call back to him, "I just had surgery, you ____," adding there at the last, to my regret, something truly unprintable.

I brooded angrily about it all the way home, and I'm still a little upset about it. Unexpected rudeness from a total stranger always does that to me, I guess. Mostly I regretted how I responded. Not just the unladylike language, I mean, but the fact that I offered him some kind of excuse for being on the train, as if I somehow owed him an explanation for my presence. There was no reason for me to have to justify my presence to him. Metro Transit has made it clear that bikes are welcome: that's why they put in the bike racks on the trains in the first place. I was taking the train so that I wouldn't be another car on the road. I paid the same damn fare he did. I know that I didn't brush against him, I didn't do anything to him. How dare he imply that I didn't belong there? I am primarily surprised to encounter the attitude, I suppose. You may find me absurdly naive, but it had never occurred to me that my fellow passengers might resent me for taking my bike on the train. Eventually, I had to turn my attention from rudeness on the LRT to my lousy physical condition (I had to stop for a spell, gasping for breath, at a stop sign a block from my home).

Altogether, it was a very sour welcome back to biking.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, this is where you need the all-purpose rejoinder, "what's it to you?" That way you don't need to quickly come up with The Clever Retort, and it puts them on the defensive, because they then have to justify, if even to themselves, why they should be cranked enough about a random person going on with your little life to make an uncalled for snarky comment.

I like to say it with puzzled expression, to drill in bizarreness of making such a comment. It leaves the rude person spluttering every time.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Excellent suggestion. I will remember that. Thanks!

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

"I BEG your pardon?", channeling your inner grand dame or most intimidating aunt, can work too.